The Greenfield Recorder

   South Deerfield resident parlays his love for the stars into successful career in astrology

South Deerfield- It was Jan. 27, 1986- the evening before the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion - when a filmed astrology report by Don Cerow was broadcast on a Springfield television show called "Cable Connection."

   Like a TV weatherman, the astrologer breezily gave out the next day's "forecast":

   "As far as tomorrow's activity is concerned, 9:00, 9:08 tomorrow morning, Mercury semisquares the planet Uranus, so we're going to find that whatever was on our itinerary for tomorrow morning is changing to some degree," said Cerow on the videotape he still keeps in his South Deerfield office. "Mercury deals not only with communication but transportation, so getting out and being on the road, dealing with traffic can be quite crazy, scheduling with people, making arrangements, finding out that folks aren't there."

   "Things happen," he continues on the tape: "flat tires, all kinds of accidents and the unexpected; machinery malfunctions, stuff... like... that... there."

   As the tape rolls on, Cerow tells a reporter watching it that the 1986 video was filmed several weeks in advance. "I had no idea the shuttle would be taking off Tuesday morning," he explains now. "It was supposed to have taken off weeks earlier, but they kept having delays."

   The day after the shuttle exploded, Cerow was called back to the television station, to explain how he derived a forecast which, while stopping short of predicting national disaster, seemed to characterize what occurred. The Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, killing the seven astronauts on board. The cause was determined to be an O-ring failure in the right solid rocket booster.

Astrologer Don Cerow with his brother's chart that he carved in an elm tree slab.

   Mercury, he explained, represents the logical mind, communication and travel, while Uranus "the planet of lightning," symbolized the unusual, the bizarre, the unexpected.

   "Things just don't go as anticipated. They don't go as you planned," Cerow says in the second taped interview. "When I see that combination, I talk about machinery malfunctions because that's quite often one of the ways that it manifests itself."

   Providing national and even international forecasts in print has become one of Cerow's specialties, and his Internet site contains copies of Cerow's before-and-after predictions concerning the Challenger explosion, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Gulf War, a catastrophic earthquake in Japan and other events.

   Cerow has been practicing astrology in the Pioneer Valley since 1972 and is perhaps one of the few astrologers to pursue astrology as part of his college studies in the 1970s.

   Since then, the South Deerfield resident has been gaining a national reputation as an astrologer, with a sideline practice on Long Island, NY, a long-running on-line newsletter he writes called "Athena's Web," and an astrology column in an Amherst weekly newspaper. He also lectures at colleges on the myths, legends and stories behind the constellations.

   Besides interpreting astrology charts for individuals, Cerow has made many national predictions, with a "birth chart" created for the United States on July 4, 1776, and with birth charts for other nations, based on their modern founding. His predictions for the nation have been featured in Astro Annual magazine since 1996.

   Last year, he was featured in the New York Times and in other New York newspapers for creating "Woodhenge" - a wood-sculpture based on Stonehenge, from which Cerow has held stargazing workshops.

   Woodhenge sits on 110 acres at the Channing Daughters Winery in Bridgehampton, and the structures are placed to align with stars and planets at certain times of the year.

   Cerow graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a bachelor's degree in classical studies and a minor in "astrology in the ancient world." He went on to study at Brandeis and Boston universities, with a focus on astrology in the ancient world.

   While studying astrology in college might sound odd to us, it would have been deemed an important art in other times. Hippocrates, Pythagoras, Nicholas Copernicus, Johann Kepler, Sir Isaac Newton and Carl Jung are among the prominent doctors and scientists who believed astrology had value, according to Cerow.

   Just as ancient sailors navigated by the stars, ancient civilizations mapped the positions of the stars as a guide to sound agricultural and other practices - for instance, knowing the right time of year in which to plant certain kinds of foods. Ancient Egypt's great strength, during years of famine in the Middle East, lie in its ability to grow, harvest and store food. Around 2,700 BC (correcting the newspaper copy of 6,000 BC) the pharaoh's astrologers were an important part of the administrative process, he said.

   "The moon was watched as the agricultural measuring stick," he said. "The Farmer's Almanac is a continuing piece of that."

Cerow has been practicing astrology in the Pioneer Valley since 1972 and is perhaps one of the few astrologers to pursue astrology as part of his college studies in the 1970s. Since then, the South Deerfield resident has been gaining a national reputation as an astrologer.

   "Astrology" literally means the science of the stars. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines astrology as the "the divination of the supposed influences of the stars and planets on human affairs and terrestrial events by their positions and aspects."

   Many people are familiar with their "sun sign," which is the basis of daily horoscopes in newspapers, but to an astrologer, the sun sign is just the beginning of the picture. The positions of the sun, moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Uranus and Pluto are all factored into an astrological birth chart, along with other celestial elements. Each is said to embody specific characteristics, and a good astrologer can interpret how one sees and thinks about the world based on how the planets are aligned at the time of birth. Current planetary positions are said to affect what is happening now. The ancients divided the spherical sky, as seen from the Earth, into 12 pie-shaped wedges that have been named for constellations in that portion of the sky: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces.

   Cerow says astrology "is a science of observation," and the astrological qualities given to each planet (for instance, Mercury as the planet of communication and Uranus as the planet of reversal or upheaval) were based on what happened as planetary positions changed.

   Although there was a lot of public snickering over the fact that former first lady Nancy Reagan consulted an astrologer, Cerow pointed out that Franklin D. Roosevelt also kept a copy of his natal astrolgocial chart in the Oval Office.

   And during World War II, astrologer Sidney Omarr was employed by the US government "to tell the US government what he felt Hitler was hearing from his astrologers," Cerow said.

   "Do people ask me how it works? They used to," said Cerow with a shrug. "I used to get queried with that basic question. In the beginning, I was more evangelical: 'It really works, let me do your chart,'" he said, recalling his early responses. "I rarely get that now," he added. "I'm more established."

   Traditionally, astrology has been dismissed out of hand," he adds. "That's been the emotional attitude for a long time."

   What makes it work, he says, is still a mystery.

   "How does it work? What the scientists often say is, astrology can't work. Doctors say the gravitational pull of the operating table has more effect (on a newborn) than the gravitational pull of Pluto. But this is not about gravitational pull. What's the mechanism? Astrology has been, for the get-go, an observational science: you watch what happens. There have been centuries of observation."

   "We don't know what the mechanical linkage is," he added. "There have been correlations we can't understand. But that doesn't mean we throw the whole thing out."

   In doing national predictions, Cerow said he looks at astrological charts from the United States' past and studies the history, to observe what events seem to correlate with the positions of the planets. His columns about current events, for instance, also tell readers about what was happening the last time certain planetary configurations played a major role in the nation's chart.

   In a Recorder interview on Nov. 20, Cerow predicted the United States would invade Iraq with an aerial attach around Dec. 30 and a land attack around Jan. 15. He believes the whole invasion will be winding up by Jan. 27, but that the United States could "metaphorically wreck our ship of state on this war" and that the invasion will be "the last hurrah" for the US technological achievements that began in the 1970s."

   "What we're going to get is not going to make up for what it's going to cost us, in money and in world standing," he said. "By 2004, we will begin to move into a new track, and at that time, we'll more fully realize, as a nation, what we've squandered."

   Cerow will be doing several Stargazing and Star Myths presentations locally in January and February. Please check the Recorder's Calendar of Events and / or call (413) 219-4214 for dates and times.

   For more of Cerow's predictions and daily astrological columns, visit his website at: http://www.AthenasWeb.com.

   You can reach Diane Broncaccio at: dbronc@recorder.com or at (413) 772-0261 Ext. 277.